LOG ON or RUN AS GCADMIN!

Important:

Logging (the checkbox) should not be enabled in a production setting. The checkbox should be enabled only to create detailed logs to send along with a support call.

Hold your mouse over the buttons or bold labels for an explanation of the functionality.

The two buttons on the left must both be clicked once. The 'Check PF root' button checks the name of your public folders store and gives an OK message or an error. 


If you get an error you may have another Public Folders root name (check that in Outlook) or more likely :

• insufficient access rights. (*)
• No local public folders store on the server.
• Not logged on as 'gcadmin'
• No permissions to create public folders.
• A dll is not correctly registered. to fix that do
  Start - Run: regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\bin\exodbprx.dll"
  
  
   

(*) check the step C install instructions and also check if the gcadmin user is able to open, change and save the Config.INI file which resides in the same folder as the gcadmin.exe
Maybe the gcamdin account has no permissions to edit the files in the program directory.

The 'Create Root folder' button must be pressed at least once, even if you don't change the name of the Root. An error message will indicate insufficient access rights. In that case repeat step C of the installation instruction. If all goes well you will get two OK messages.

If they fail to show up in the list that says 'currently defined GroupCalendars' try to create another GroupCalendar root name on the left hand bottom.

You can change the permissions from within Outlook (logged on as gcadmin) or from the Exchange Command line shell. Users need only reviewer rights to see the content. Even when they have no permissions at all, their appointments can still show up in a groupcalendar. 

So it is safe to set user permissions to a low level or even untick the 'Folder visible' for some users. 
One thing is very important though. The GCADMIN account must always be listed as owner. 

The Exchange command shell would need two commands for this. The first one to remove the current permissions for the default role:

Remove-PublicFolderClientPermission \GroupCalendars\everyone -User Default -AccessRights Author

and the second command to enable reviewer permissions

Add-PublicFolderClientPermission \GroupCalendars\everyone -User Default -AccessRights Reviewer

You may want to recursively add permissions to multiple public folders under the root folder all at once. Then you can use this command syntax:

get-publicfolder "FolderName" -recurse | add-publicfolderclientpermission -accessrights "rights" -user "user"

example

get-publicfolder \GroupCalendars -recurse | add-publicfolderclientpermission -accessrights OWNER -user GCADMIN

Two way sync.

Click on one of the GroupCalendars in the list to see the current status of the two-way replication feature for that GroupCalendar.

In GroupCalendars that have a green box, users with sufficient permissions (*) can create or change items in the GroupCalendar and the change will replicate back to the personal calendar. This is a nice feature for office managers and others who need easy access to other peoples schedules for editing.
The egcGridView tool is available and using that, meetings and appointments can be created for other users as well in the groupcalendars.

When a scheduled meeting is moved in the GroupCalendar, the item will update automatically in the organizers personal calendar and the other users (attendees) will automatically receive an update notice which seems to come from the organizer.
Single items (non meetings) will simply follow the change in the groupcalendar.
Deleting from the GroupCalendar is not (and will not become) available. Editors that want an item gone from the user's calendar and thus from the GroupCalendar should either:
- Change the subject of the group item (add cancelled or remove) so the owner can see it needs deletion in the personal calendar, or,
- Move the item in the group to Sunday night or any other date that you see fit to use as your "deleted items day"

(*) Permissions

Users that you want to allow to edit items in two-way sync enabled calendars or users that want to use the GridView tool to edit and create items, should have Edit permissions.

(Note that you can remove the create items tick as well but drag and drop will then not work and create will not work in the gridview tool. Editors will have to open the appointment and change the item in that way. Another alternative setting reported by a licensee using GridView is to set the permissions to Publishing Editor and also click Folder contact )

Users that you want to only view items in two-way sync enabled calendars should have these permissions.
This goes for non two-way sync enabled calendars as well.

You can edit these permissions in Exchange system manager or from Outlook (right click the public folder calendar) when logged in as gcadmin.

Permissions for editors

view only permissions

(example: You can disable the display of "Free Time" items in the general settings. If you have a "vacations" groupcalendar you might want to show only "free time" items there so in the Override setting of the "Vacations" calendar you would tick the "Show Free time" option and leave all other settings intact as specified in "General Settings".)

There are a lot of options you can use to make sure that every groupcalendar only shows the desired information. Combine this with the user permissions you can set on every Public Folder from within Outlook and you have all the tools to make sure that every user only sees the information they need. 

(With regards to setting permissions on calendars; nobody needs access but gcadmin. A users' calendar items can be visible in a GroupCalendar while that GroupCalendar remains invisible to that user!)

The settings are grouped by the property that leads the action. The first form holds the Miscellaneous Rules, the actions based on the Private property and actions based on the Category property of an appointment.

By default, all items in the groupcalendars will be displayed with the initials of the user in between brackets. 
If no initials are available in the active directory, the exchange alias will be used. 
However it is possible to override this behavior by selecting the user name display option and take a pick from the available name parts. The number 100 represents the choice to use all characters of a name part. The 'order' 1 to 4 can be changed to compose the desired format.
In the example to the right you see the choice :

 All initials + all of last name 

The two checkboxes for first name and full name are not ticked so they will not be used.

Press the "NEXT" button 

While configuring the specific rules for this calendar we can still see what the General Settings are. The dark grey boxes on the left show the general setting and the dark grey option on the right shows the effective setting for this Vacation calendar. 

If the general settings change, that change will also effect the settings for this option in this Specific calendar.

If the general settings change, that change will not effect the settings for this option in this Specific calendar.

On the left you see all Group Calendar names.

On the right are the Groups in your Active Directory and once a Group has been selected the users will be shown in the list below.

For very large organizations it might be a good idea to select an Organizational Unit that represents the top level of the active directory where all "your" users are under and tick the "Show only OU's under" option to narrow down the list of OU's to an acceptable amount. 

The mapping information can also be found in the active directory user field 'Description'. If the Description field already contains information the calendar mapping information is added to that existing description.

The other button "List users of selected calendar(s)" will produce a printable report of the user mappings. Click that button after selecting the GroupCalendars you are interested in.

After completion of this step you have your GroupCalendars ready to display only what you want, the users are set up to share their calendar info in the appropriate public calendars and only one thing remains; start the actual sharing of information in step #3 

Press button # 3 to open the switch form.

From here you enable or disable the calendar sharing for selected users.

In step #2 users are mapped to one or more calendars. However until you switch them ON they will not participate and their calendar information will not be visible in the GroupCalendars they have been mapped to.

Only the users that you configured in step #2 with a GroupCalendar mapping will be visible in the list and can be switched ON.

Make sure that before you remove users from all groupcalendars in step #2 you first unshare their calendar here.

If this fails; Check the primary smtp email address of the user. Make sure the Exchange Alias (on the 'exchange general' tab in the active directory) is the same as the primary email address. (only the part before the @). So email address jack@opus.com would give alias 'jack'
If you still can not get it to work this way, open the gcadminerrorlog.txt file from c:\Exchange Group Calendar. Browse down from the top until you find the entry 'Exchange name : xxxxx.yyy'
When the value xxxxx.yyy differs from the primary email address you must add a secondary smtp address to the user properties in the form of ALIAS@xxxx.yyy

Also confirm that you have the com+ component installed and configured to run with the gcadmin name and password. (identity tab)

If you are working on users in a child domain you might have to give them a secondary smtp address with the same namespace as the exchange server top level. (example: The exchange server is in opus.com and the users in child.opus.com. Give those users user@opus.com as a secondary email address.

After these steps you are ready for testing. Simply create a new appointment in the personal calendar (*) of one of the users and if it complies to the rules you set up in the calendar configuration of step#1 you should now see it appear in the groupcalendars. 

(*) A common mistake is that people create items in a calendar folder that is part of a PST file and not in their Exchange Inbox. 

To export existing appointments from your users' personal calendars into the Group Calendar you first select the users and click the import button. You will have to do this only once when you start using the software. 

It will not create duplicate items if you use the option later again to fill up a newly created groupcalendar folder with existing appointments.

(*) Before exporting existing calendars, make sure that you stop the Exchange GroupCalendar Check & Fix service.
When the export has finished and your server CPU is back at a normal level, open the USERS.INI file in c:\Exchange Group Calendar\Service  and delete everything from it. Close the Users.ini and start the  Check & Fix service again.

Read the user experience to learn what you can expect from the Exchange GroupCalendar software.

If you like the software you can order a license here. No need to uninstall the demo version, we will send you a license after purchase to turn the demo version into a full version.
If it's not what you are looking for let us know. We welcome all suggestions; in fact the current functionality of the software was created based purely on user feedback and suggestions.

To uninstall the software you must first stop sharing for all users in step #3. After that you select all users and calendars in step #2 and disconnect everyone. Now you can uninstall the software from control panel - add/remove programs. This will remove the com+ component and executable.